Personalised domain names - worth it?

[citoyen]

I had a reminder recently that it was time to renew the domain names I own. But I decided to keep only one of them.

One was [my name].co.uk, which I did once have plans for but have never actually used. Another was [my son's name].co.uk - which I acquired on his behalf when he was very small, imagining that it might come in useful one day. Now he's a grown-up, I asked him if he wants me to transfer ownership over to him, but he wasn't bothered.

The one I've kept is tied to an email address that I have used for some years. The original idea was to have an email address that's not tied to any particular service provider, so I wouldn't have to change all my online accounts when I moved to a new provider, but I mostly use my gmail address these days. I've renewed it for two years, but I'll see if I can retire it completely by the time it next comes up for renewal.

I've thought about acquiring a domain name for the website I've set up for my audax events, but it's a very basic Wordpress site and I've stuck with the generic free Wordpress url so far - almost seems like a waste of money buying a bespoke url for it. If it were a business and I had a company van to paint the name on the side of, I might think it was worth having a proper url... but it isn't.

What does the panel think? Is there any compelling reason to have a personalised domain name these days?

Now that [my name].co.uk is available for anyone who wants it, I might get in touch with my namesake (an English artist based in Spain) and see if he's interested - he might have a more compelling business reason to want to own the domain. But he's not far off his 90th birthday now so has probably missed that boat.

[nicknack]

I've got one. firstname@lastname.co.uk
I think it's about a tenner a year ($9.58) from namecheap.
We had to get a new email when we moved cos Virgin said we could no longer use our blueyonder one.
I couldn't say whether it's worth it or not. We use it as our main email addresses but for nuffink we could use a free plusnet one or gmail.

[Feanor]

I've had my own domain name since the beginning of time.

I don't really have any significant web presence on the domain ( indeed, there's no home page at the root of domain at all! ) but I do host a couple of very small pages one level down.

Mostly, I use it to keep control of e-mail for everyone here.
I am ron@blah.me.uk, everyone else here has their own and there are heaps of temporary ones set up from time to time for whatever reason.

I advise against having e-mail tied to your ISP. ( joe.blow.123456@here-today-gone-tommorrow.com)
I also don't want to be beholden to the big e-mail providers.
I have no control over what they randomly chuck out.
Also, privacy! I'm not passing my mail through their data mining engines.

Also... ron99.123456@gmail.com is just about fine for a plumber, but...

https://theoatmeal.com/comics/email_address

[Jaded]

^ agreed

[citoyen]

I advise against having e-mail tied to your ISP. ( joe.blow.123456@here-today-gone-tommorrow.com)

Definitely!

I also don't want to be beholden to the big e-mail providers.

That's a fair point.

Also... ron99.123456@gmail.com is just about fine for a plumber, but...

 

I love seeing email addresses like that painted on the side of vans.

Tbh, my only real regret with my personalised domain is that I didn't choose something based on a more memorable word, rather than an obscure literary reference that is easily misspelt... 

Maybe I should come up with a new one.

[hbunnet]

I think it's worth it although my domain has a daft name it's mine and like Feanor it helps to keep control of family Email.  It costs buttons.
An EMail tied to your ISP is daft and looks naff unless you have an unusual name. I have a chum with a Teuchter first name name who has Teuchter@hotmail.com.

[citoyen]

An EMail tied to your ISP is daft and looks naff unless you have an unusual name. I have a chum with a Teuchter first name name who has Teuchter@hotmail.com.

Yes, I'm lucky that my surname is unusual. Kim has often commented on the number of emails she gets meant for other people, and that does seem like a fairly compelling case for having your own domain if your name is common. But then it doesn't seem to bother Kim too much and she's not daft.

[Ham]

I too have had my own domain since the beginning of time, or round about when coffee cam went live. I also blagged a few names that seemed like potential projects, and have since sold off for not an awful lot of profit.

There's no way that I'd be without it, freeing me as it does from the tyranny and vagaries of ISP, email providers. There are downsides, though.

- Main one is that you can end up blacklisted, or greylisted either through spammers using your domain as return address or sites saying, "we don' do that little shit'. If you know about it (say, a mail bounces) then it's easy to use your real ISP/gmail if you want, but you may not know about it, as your mail can be dropped.

- if your name is unusual, then it might be actually easier for people to write down if you have eg Ham007@gmail.com vs ham@hamfirstnamelastname.co.uk

- minor one, you are slowing your mail down fractionally

[MattH]

I'm well into my third decade of owning mine, which I also host on my own servers and have done for the last 20 years. I find it useful, but suspect the yoof of today won't care as much. Who needs email when you use facebook, twitter, instagram, whatsapp, etc? None of them use your email address as the means of routing to you.

It is good having a proper domain for professional reasons - sending out a CV with a "humorous" or "cute" gmail/hotmail address, or, even worse, shared "keithandcathy@mailprovider" looks rubbish and sets an expectation about you.

[ian]

I've had two domains forever, they don't cost much, and it's simpler than porting between ISPs. I did pick a name for one that's difficult to spell but it ensures I never get spam from dyslexics.

I just use the host's forwarding service, takes a few minutes to set up for whatever ISP emails are provided (I dare anyone to figure out BT's email configuration labyrinth though).

[Jaded]

The best email address is a gmail one with your name and birthday  in it. 

[perpetual dan]

I've got several variants of myname.me.uk. Consolidating might make some sense!

Sent from my SM-G930F using Tapatalk

[phantasmagoriana]

I'm another one who's had a domain of my own for >20 years (not my name, though it contains a bit of it). I don't really use it for much these days, but it's not exactly expensive to hang on to it, and I don't want to let it go to someone else.

[MikeFromLFE]

We had a really useful    @familyname.eu  domain
That hasn't ended well.

[Lightning Phil]

We had a really useful    @familyname.eu  domain
That hasn't ended well.

Ha ha. Same here.

[Lightning Phil]

Had various domains over the years.  But I’ve gradually dropped them now. I did used to run my own email servers.  But even with DKIM and SPF etc I found my emails would get blocked as Spam by the big boys.  They don’t like you having your own email setup. Blocking you even though there was no pattern matching a spammer.

I’ve used domains for projects then dropped those domains when I’ve finished them. As above also had my surname.eu domain which clearly covers whole family. But Brexit meant relinquishing it.

[D.A.L.E.]

I'm another one who's had a domain of my own for >20 years (not my name, though it contains a bit of it). I don't really use it for much these days, but it's not exactly expensive to hang on to it, and I don't want to let it go to someone else.

Same, I've used it in the past, but no real need anymore. It costs about the same as a large, kind of expensive, cup of coffee to keep myname.co.uk/.com/net each year.

I've thought about acquiring a domain name for the website I've set up for my audax events, but it's a very basic Wordpress site and I've stuck with the generic free Wordpress url so far - almost seems like a waste of money buying a bespoke url for it. If it were a business and I had a company van to paint the name on the side of, I might think it was worth having a proper url... but it isn't.

I've got a couple of random URLs, for different projects that I use as forwarding domains mostly. For instance, instead of giving out "https://audax.uk/event-details?eventId=9115", I'd just set "randovibes.co.uk" to forward to that event or something. For me, it looks cooler so it's worth it.

[Woofage]

https://theoatmeal.com/comics/email_address

Load of bollocks (apart from the aol bit, obv.  ).

[quixoticgeek]

I have a number of domains, including a couple of 3 letter .eu domains. The main issue with the latter is people don't believe that <single letter> <@> 42q.eu is a real address.

The domain I am most pleased with however is cetaceanneeded.com

J

[Kim]

https://theoatmeal.com/comics/email_address

Load of bollocks (apart from the aol bit, obv.  ).

This one probably needs updating.  I recall a Young Person commenting on barakta's gmail address as "Ah, an Android user".

It's still cringeworthy when you see an embarassing ISP or webmail provider address on some business's sign-written van.  They might as well go the whole hog and add random apostrophes.


But yes, it's worth having your own domain for the simple reason you're not tied to a particular ISP/advertising company/innovative startup with a habit of discontinuing cool services.  Avoid anything that's too unusual: Nobody's read the RFCs and all sorts of systems will reject clever addresses on spurious grounds.  Also avoid homophones, anything that's too easy to tyop, and words that people can't spell (the W3W thread is ...somewhere).

[Woofage]

https://theoatmeal.com/comics/email_address

Load of bollocks (apart from the aol bit, obv.  ).

This one probably needs updating.  I recall a Young Person commenting on barakta's gmail address as "Ah, an Android user".

It's still cringeworthy when you see an embarassing ISP or webmail provider address on some business's sign-written van.  They might as well go the whole hog and add random apostrophes.


But yes, it's worth having your own domain for the simple reason you're not tied to a particular ISP/advertising company/innovative startup with a habit of discontinuing cool services.  Avoid anything that's too unusual: Nobody's read the RFCs and all sorts of systems will reject clever addresses on spurious grounds.  Also avoid homophones, anything that's too easy to tyop, and words that people can't spell (the W3W thread is ...somewhere).

I do have a couple of domains that I use for my personal e-mail, it's just that I forward them to my Yahoo account (which I have had for about 20+ years, certainly well before Gmail). I can re-direct anywhere else though with a few clicks.

I found the description of Hotmail in that Oatmeal piece amusing. I had a Hotmail account in the 90s* (it was free so why not?). I've never owned a Compaq or used MySpace...

* I think it was shut down due to inactivity.

[nuttycyclist]

I had a hotmail account in the 90's too as it was free and the only way I had at the time for getting emails, which were becoming a thing.  Terms and conditions said you had to log in every 30 days otherwise it was deleted.

A busy time at work coupled with a holiday, and I didn't check the emails in 30 days.  Day 31 (I think it was) I tried logging in to check, but everything was gone and I had no account anymore.  No way of getting it back.  Much pain of having to contact everybody to tell them to change my email address on their records.

It was one of the drivers behind me setting up my own domain.

Mrs Nutty had to lose her ISP address, so switched to gmail (even though I offered her an address on the domain).  That was months of pain trying to contact every bank/organisation/every website she has an account on/etc in order to change the registered email address.

[CommuteTooFar]

I am <@fullname.me.uk>

I have had this domain for years.  I could not get last name only another family owns it. 
Aims

1. Decouple my address from the isp.
2. I can create lots of email addresses. Originally it was for each web site that demanded an email address.  This enabled me to find out who sold their email list. This has been come much less important over the years since very few shops do that anymore.  The most annoying catch was when I got a general banking marketing email from an American company using mybank@fullname.me.uk  My bank claimed it was an accident that the marketing company my bank use, used the wrong mailing list. Even so I do not want an e-mail address I use for online banking used for any marketing even from my bank. These days I generally use generic groups such as shop, holiday, friend, family and special names for thing I use a lot such as amazon, mybank (slightly different now) etc.  My brother broke my family@me when he passed the address he knew and gave it to my cycle club.

[Kim]

I found the description of Hotmail in that Oatmeal piece amusing. I had a Hotmail account in the 90s* (it was free so why not?). I've never owned a Compaq or used MySpace...

As what Gretchen McCulloch describes as an Old Internet Person, I find it mildly hilarious when Full Internet People talk about the heady days of Yahoo/MySpace/LiveJournal as if it were the dawn of time.  When the Post Internet People talk about them the way I might talk about UUCP or ARPANET, I just feel old.

(I like these classifications of generations of internet users, because they aren't rigidly tied to chronological generations, especially at the Baby Boomer/GenX crossover, where people's experience of the internet is so variable.)

I don't think simply having a hotmail account was incriminating, as all the competent people had one too.  Mine mostly got used for diagnosing problems sending email to hotmail users, and possibly as an instant messenger account in the days when you needed all four to be able to talk to everyone.  Possibly a more useful distinction was whether hotmail users, on discovering that some email to them had been black-holed would understand that was hotmail's over-enthusiastic spam filtering, rather than insist that it must be a fault at $competent_ISP because they've never heard of them.

For 'Compaq' you could probably substitute any beige computer at this point.  Gateway 2000^[1] and Packard Bell deserve honourable mention for horrendous low-end machines of the era.


_{[1] Who would have sold more machines if they'd actually been a Fresian cow pattern, rather than Computer Beige.}

[Lightning Phil]

I also find it amusing when the so called digital natives think instant messaging came with their generation.  Erm nope. I was using a basic form in the late 70s and a more advanced version in the 80s. Pure text worked well enough and still does across slow connections.